- Joined
- May 30, 2007
- Messages
- 9,019 (1.46/day)
System Name | Black Panther |
---|---|
Processor | i9 9900k |
Motherboard | Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO Wifi 1.0 |
Cooling | NZXT Kraken X72 360mm |
Memory | 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 3600Mhz |
Video Card(s) | Palit RTX2080 Ti Dual 11GB DDR6 |
Storage | Samsung EVO 970 500GB SSD M.2 & 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm |
Display(s) | 32'' Gigabyte G32QC 2560x1440 165Hz |
Case | NZXT H710i Black |
Audio Device(s) | Razer Electra V2 & Z5500 Speakers |
Power Supply | Seasonic Focus GX-850 Gold 80+ |
Mouse | Some Corsair lost the box forgot the model |
Keyboard | Motospeed |
Software | Windows 10 |
The specs of the pc in question:
1.6Ghz Pentium 4 Willamette
P4VXMS Elitegroup Motherboard
786MB (256MB 7 years old and 512MB 2 years old) of heaven knows the brand.
FX5500 Graphics card, 256MB passively cooled.
Some really crappy PSU definitely under 350W but no specs written anywhere.
This is all that happened so far:
Powered it up, played Oldblivion for like 5 minutes, then it crashed. Not a normal crash, but as if an invisible finger pressed the reset button.
Back to Windows.... played another 5 minutes... same thing happened. Twice more.
Afterwards, it didn't even load Windows. It'd come to the loading Windows screen (before the blue Welcome screen) and reboot and restart... an endless cycle. No beeps though.
So I powered it off and tried Safe Mode. I entered Safe Mode but the screen remained black. Sure enough I had 'safe mode' written on all 4 corners of the monitor, but no picture, no icons, no mouse, no taskbar.
I rebooted again and got a very brief BSOD I couldn't read what was written.
Rebooted again, and got the blue screen (not BSOD) of wanting to check drive C. Stalled at 6%.......
Rebooted once more, this time the disk check went through.
Windows loaded but the picture on the monitor was very funny. I mean the only thing right was the desktop background picture... The taskbar was like semi transparent and at the middle of the picture, and the icons were also semi transparent and very much duplicated, like 8 of every icon, and squashed on the top half of the monitor. The mouse pointer flashed, sometimes it was visible and sometimes it wasn't, and it didn't work if I tried to click anywhere. If I right-clicked the menu worked and I tried to go into display properties or nvidia control panel, but they didn't work and I had that very brief BSOD again.
I tried restarting my computer some 3 other times, but always kept getting the same funny transparent icons x 8 and the taskbar in the middle of the monitor.
Even the taskbar was weird. I could see the 'Start' button very faintly, some 6 or eight times along the length of the taskbar. And pressing it doesn't work either.
A week later............
I brought the Pentium 4 home so as to be able to work on it...
Problem (1): computer rebooting and NOW even starting beeping after 10 minutes.
Solved by removing one 256MB ram stick and letting it run on the other 512MB ram stick.
The pc probably had been defective a long time. Ever since I purchased it 7 years ago, whenever I transported it it never posted, I had to disconnect everything, put the tower on a table and remove and re-insert the ram.
Problem (2) was a direct cause of problem (1)....
Due to me having to regularly disconnect everything to remove and re-insert the ram sticks....
Well today I removed the vga monitor cable from the FX5500, to see whether if I put it in the motherboard graphics I would have the same problem. To my surprise I looked at the vga connector and there was one pin missing!!! Probably it had long been getting loose (hence the mucked up desktop) and probably the last time I removed the monitor vga connector it fell off somewhere and got lost.
At that point I loaded everything in my car and set off for home. Note that I hadn't yet solved problem (1). So the pc beeped, I fiddled with the ram and it worked... I had inserted the vga connector from another monitor into the FX5500. I had checked and controlled that the lost pin hadn't been enbedded in the 5500 and it wasn't. Still I got the mucked up desktop. After some minutes the computer rebooted by its own and didn't load but started beeping. After I did some more experimenting with the ram sticks I found the solution for problem (1) which was to remove the oldest ram stick the one of 256MB which I originally purchased together with the whole pc.
Notwithstanding everything, I still kept getting the funny graphics on the FX5500 but at least now the pc wasn't rebooting every 10 minutes.
My P4VXMS motherboard doesn't have a proper onboard graphics card - there are 15 pin connectors but they have pins instead of holes. To fit into the monitor vga connector they have to have holes.
I still managed to test it out though. Because I had the old Geforce 2 MX400 card which had been sitting on a shelf in the antistatic plastic for some 3+ years....
Sure enough... I put the MX400 inside...
And now I've got a perfectly working pc... I should be celebrating? NOT, because it's:
With 512MB RAM instead of 768MB.......
And with an MX400 instead of an FX5500 graphics card..........
In fact I'm logged in and typing from this 1.6Ghz P4... while updating windows and stuff because it hasn't been connected to the net since May 2007...
Sooooo....
I've got a question please:
I think I know the answer but I am not ready to accept it lol... if my FX5500 didn't work using the other monitor (which doesn't have a missing pin in the vga connector)... uhhh... does it mean that my FX5500 is RIP? Darn I could play Oldblivion on that but on the MX400 I know there's no chance...
You know how a vga adapter is shaped like a blue boat with 5x3 pins... Can the loss of just one pin simply fry out a graphics card?
What makes me all the more sad is that I can't just say like wow my graphics card's bust and I can now purchase a better one...
With one of the earliest Pentium 4's, a Willamette 1.6Ghz, what graphics card ever could I ever buy to be better than an FX5500??? Sure I could find some 7900 AGP but that'd be bottlenecked.
I was thinking of getting some 6800 (or maybe someone can suggest an ATI equivalent?), and another 512MB of SDRAM PC-133.
I just really want to keep this pc working because notwithstanding all problems and its old age I like it...
Can I cry please?
1.6Ghz Pentium 4 Willamette
P4VXMS Elitegroup Motherboard
786MB (256MB 7 years old and 512MB 2 years old) of heaven knows the brand.
FX5500 Graphics card, 256MB passively cooled.
Some really crappy PSU definitely under 350W but no specs written anywhere.
This is all that happened so far:
Powered it up, played Oldblivion for like 5 minutes, then it crashed. Not a normal crash, but as if an invisible finger pressed the reset button.
Back to Windows.... played another 5 minutes... same thing happened. Twice more.
Afterwards, it didn't even load Windows. It'd come to the loading Windows screen (before the blue Welcome screen) and reboot and restart... an endless cycle. No beeps though.
So I powered it off and tried Safe Mode. I entered Safe Mode but the screen remained black. Sure enough I had 'safe mode' written on all 4 corners of the monitor, but no picture, no icons, no mouse, no taskbar.
I rebooted again and got a very brief BSOD I couldn't read what was written.
Rebooted again, and got the blue screen (not BSOD) of wanting to check drive C. Stalled at 6%.......
Rebooted once more, this time the disk check went through.
Windows loaded but the picture on the monitor was very funny. I mean the only thing right was the desktop background picture... The taskbar was like semi transparent and at the middle of the picture, and the icons were also semi transparent and very much duplicated, like 8 of every icon, and squashed on the top half of the monitor. The mouse pointer flashed, sometimes it was visible and sometimes it wasn't, and it didn't work if I tried to click anywhere. If I right-clicked the menu worked and I tried to go into display properties or nvidia control panel, but they didn't work and I had that very brief BSOD again.
I tried restarting my computer some 3 other times, but always kept getting the same funny transparent icons x 8 and the taskbar in the middle of the monitor.
Even the taskbar was weird. I could see the 'Start' button very faintly, some 6 or eight times along the length of the taskbar. And pressing it doesn't work either.
A week later............
I brought the Pentium 4 home so as to be able to work on it...
Problem (1): computer rebooting and NOW even starting beeping after 10 minutes.
Solved by removing one 256MB ram stick and letting it run on the other 512MB ram stick.
The pc probably had been defective a long time. Ever since I purchased it 7 years ago, whenever I transported it it never posted, I had to disconnect everything, put the tower on a table and remove and re-insert the ram.
Problem (2) was a direct cause of problem (1)....
Due to me having to regularly disconnect everything to remove and re-insert the ram sticks....
Well today I removed the vga monitor cable from the FX5500, to see whether if I put it in the motherboard graphics I would have the same problem. To my surprise I looked at the vga connector and there was one pin missing!!! Probably it had long been getting loose (hence the mucked up desktop) and probably the last time I removed the monitor vga connector it fell off somewhere and got lost.
At that point I loaded everything in my car and set off for home. Note that I hadn't yet solved problem (1). So the pc beeped, I fiddled with the ram and it worked... I had inserted the vga connector from another monitor into the FX5500. I had checked and controlled that the lost pin hadn't been enbedded in the 5500 and it wasn't. Still I got the mucked up desktop. After some minutes the computer rebooted by its own and didn't load but started beeping. After I did some more experimenting with the ram sticks I found the solution for problem (1) which was to remove the oldest ram stick the one of 256MB which I originally purchased together with the whole pc.
Notwithstanding everything, I still kept getting the funny graphics on the FX5500 but at least now the pc wasn't rebooting every 10 minutes.
My P4VXMS motherboard doesn't have a proper onboard graphics card - there are 15 pin connectors but they have pins instead of holes. To fit into the monitor vga connector they have to have holes.
I still managed to test it out though. Because I had the old Geforce 2 MX400 card which had been sitting on a shelf in the antistatic plastic for some 3+ years....
Sure enough... I put the MX400 inside...
And now I've got a perfectly working pc... I should be celebrating? NOT, because it's:
With 512MB RAM instead of 768MB.......
And with an MX400 instead of an FX5500 graphics card..........
In fact I'm logged in and typing from this 1.6Ghz P4... while updating windows and stuff because it hasn't been connected to the net since May 2007...
Sooooo....
I've got a question please:
I think I know the answer but I am not ready to accept it lol... if my FX5500 didn't work using the other monitor (which doesn't have a missing pin in the vga connector)... uhhh... does it mean that my FX5500 is RIP? Darn I could play Oldblivion on that but on the MX400 I know there's no chance...
You know how a vga adapter is shaped like a blue boat with 5x3 pins... Can the loss of just one pin simply fry out a graphics card?
What makes me all the more sad is that I can't just say like wow my graphics card's bust and I can now purchase a better one...
With one of the earliest Pentium 4's, a Willamette 1.6Ghz, what graphics card ever could I ever buy to be better than an FX5500??? Sure I could find some 7900 AGP but that'd be bottlenecked.
I was thinking of getting some 6800 (or maybe someone can suggest an ATI equivalent?), and another 512MB of SDRAM PC-133.
I just really want to keep this pc working because notwithstanding all problems and its old age I like it...
Can I cry please?